Search form

JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL

March 23, 2016 - 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

In a special event co-sponsored by the Iowa Translation Workshop, Jesse Lee Kercheval will read from her work. Her most recent translation, a bilingual collection, The Invisible Bridge/El Puente Invisible gathers many of the luminous, deeply philosophical poems of Circe Maia, one of the few living poets left of the generation which brought Latin American writing to world prominence.

Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of fifteen books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her translations of the Uruguayan poets Circe Maia, Tatiana Oroño, Idea Vilariño, and Javier Etchevarren have appeared in the American Literary Review, the Colorado Review, Guernica, Ploughshares, Stand, World Literature Today, and The New Yorker. She is the recipient of two NEA grants; the most recent in 2015 for translation, and another for fiction in 1989.

Jesse Lee Kercheval is the Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

“The world in its raging, rich variety fills these poems, overflowing into vivid images that root Maia’s political and social attention firmly in the real scenes and objects all around us. Her eye is unfailing—both generous and demanding—and her language does indeed build bridges, establishing solid but surprising connections between ideas and things. Kercheval’s masterful translations create yet another bridge, bringing Maia’s poetic vision across into English with an astonishingly beautiful music.” —Cole Swenson